Paul Hamlyn has lived in London for longer than he can remember.  Since crossing the river on a Southbound train in 1995 he has never looked back, but has often looked sideways.

If you enjoy the poetry, why not send a note to the author by email to hello@scribblingrivalry.com, who will forward your comments.

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An unreliable guide to south-east London

Volume I

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SE1

Bankside?  Bermondsey?  The South East alphabet starts here, at the gateway to London's Most Historic Borough.  The label screams its agenda - this is where you shift to if you're tired of pomp and sick of circumstance, all those temples of taste and understatement, all those slabs of Scott and piles of Pugin, lectures in stone from a dead empire's propaganda section.  Here is the id to Whitehall's superego, the engine-room below the nation's stairs.  Here are the theatres of cruelty and concupiscence, the gloomy wharves, the dunghills of the dispossessed.  But don’t worry, the whores are health-checked, the bears enjoy a gentle baiting, and Mr Sanyo's eye is never closed. Make sure you stay within his range, and don’t wander off into the wild country.  The South Bank may look like a car park crossed with a half-finished reactor, but it’s there for your protection.  Culture is like fire, primitive peoples are afraid of it.  Heap Big Medicine, guard the formula, don’t let them see the mechanism.

SE2

What happened?  Where are we?  The drive has warped, the phasers have phucked up.  This is the land that time forgot, the two-dimensional afterthought that slipped off the map.  An Abbey.  A Wood.  But the abbey was built on guilt.  A medieval handout from a man who helped make royalty safe from the turbulence of priests.  Still, the wood is good.

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Blackheath.  It ain’t black and there’s no heath in it.  Watling Street takes a lurch up through the social strata, the air thins and the accents assume the appropriate position.  House prices rise in proportion to their ability to survive the imminent melting of the ice-caps (don’t believe that nice man at the Thames Barrier - nothing can hold back that tide!)  There's bread tied up in the masonry, circuses on the grass and an all-year roundabout.  Forget the plague pits, remember your kite, your running gear and your place.  Beware of Mayors bearing broadswords - they may not be purely ceremonial.

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Brockley.  A little-used station on a branch line in Gloucestershire?  No.  A minor public school forced to close after allegations of satanic abuse?  No.  A trapezoid of bland gentility under siege from uncouth neighbours?  Maybe.

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Camberwell.  Where Art and Madness meet, and agree to differ.  The avant garde can be a bit of a chore after a hard day in the asylum, and the Maudsley won’t thank you for being tarred with Bedlam’s brush.  Up in the Park of Champions, the shock-troops of the Sally Army are only obeying orders.  Down below, St Giles looks smug, its spire in a private ward of scaffolding, waiting for jealous visitors to sign the plaster.  Across the way, knowing life's a Lottery and blind to the cracks in the Pangloss (or is it just emulsion?), Voltaire ignores the lucky bible-bashers, thrusts a brave face at Peckham Road.  Racine is invisible but Ra has definitely been seen.

SE6

While the fumes of the South Circular bathe the shores of Plassy Island, the gun shop windows flaunt their wares.  In Coolest Catford, even the dogs are on the run.

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Charlton.  A hamlet of two halves.  The Village and the Valley.  Horn Fair to high rise.  Plucky little Addicks paddling for dear life in a Premier shark tank, while the Barrier holds a warped mirror to the river's moods.  Unlucky Spencer Perceval mouldering in St Luke's, cursing that last soundbite, killed before cryogenics could save his policies for future spin-doctors to revive. 

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Deptford.  Dreaming of megawatts and master shipwrights.  It's been downhill all the way since Drake felt the tap of royal steel on his shoulder and Big Pete Romanov trashed Evelyn's pad, with not even boroughhood left when the plot was torn away.  Hezza flung a few handouts from the chopper before he flew off through the Thames Gateway, and the powers that be became the powers that were.  Now a makeover's in prospect, but will it ever trickle down?

SE9

Eltham.  A picture postcard with blood on the back.  A land medieval minds have made safe for skin-deep England, as the Rebel Yells burst from the necks of shell suits.  The barbarians have taken the castle from under the nose of English Heritage.  The estates are well-stocked and the hunting is said to be excellent.  I blame the Plantagenets.

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Greenwich.  Where the Time's so Mean the kids have given up asking it.  The bug from the next century is biting, even though the last one's barely given up its lease.  Along the High Road sweeps a Golden Horde of decorators, shouting their hurrahs.  They rip out slop-stained counters, torch old tables with the beer still damp on them, open up the quietly festering saloons to healing revelation.  Out on the peninsular, the stretched awning does its best to keep our disbelief suspended, gagging at the dog's breath from the tunnel shaft.  Underneath, the Big Six sponsors stake their claims in concrete, laying down the vaults to underpin the corporate cathedral.  Meanwhile the friendless power station plods on in a pose of perpetuity, scraping out a second fiddle to Lots Road.  Not everyone believes in miracles.

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Kennington.  The earth doesn't come much saltier.  Reeks of a deserving poverty that might look good in one of your CV's more unassuming corners, but it's not quite Lambeth.  The bishops bagged a swankier address beside the river.  Charlie Chaplin decided he preferred the San Fernando Valley.  The Empire of the War Museum has closed its borders, and the Elephant looks down its trunk.  There's not much swagger in a Lambeth Walk that can't wait to get away.  Meanwhile as summer shuffles back to the pavilion, Surrey's shadows fall on a flat track that takes a bit of spin.

SE12

 Lee.  Two Tigers guard the junction, jaws frozen in a yawn of carious canines, lording it over packs of pissheads.  With security like this, the Manor House will have to look after itself.  Not everything in the Gardens is lovely, but they have influential Friends. No point in looking to Baring’s for a handout, though, whatever’s on the plaque.

SE13

Long, low, lazy Lewisham, land of might-have-beens and never-will-be's.  Where history’s conveyor belt fades into the mists of municipal fantasy, and snags itself.  When Boudicca’s chariot rumbles through an inner city mural, the whirr of the slashing knives is drowned out by the sound of barrels being scraped.  The Army & Navy demobbed years ago, but is a giant cop-shop an improvement on the hole they left behind?  Is the price of regeneration eternal surveillance?  Don't worry, those plans are on the shelf with all the rest.  Better to put your faith in Fairview and your trust in Tesco, while you wait for Docklands to extend itself.

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New Cross, where life writes its own rules and breaks them while the ink’s still wet.  A corridor half the world drives through every day, no wonder there are so many volatile organics about.  Like the Black Dogs that guard hot motors in the railway tangle, like the power plant that gobbles garbage and spins off thirty megawatts of power as clean as Millwall's last score sheet.  Pollution is mother's milk to them.  The University of Hard Knocks can boast a sprawling campus and the sexiest of lecturers, from Hitler to the Housing department.  Goldsmith's has competition.

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William Blake saw angels coming through the Rye, but the Council must have frowned on their angelic decibels and moved them on.  You may still catch the scent of Africa, or a Number Sixty-Three.  Now that the Trotters have gone upmarket and the Friars have laid the ghost of Reagan’s granddad, the Renaissance can’t be far from Peckham.

SE16

The dolphins wallow by the wharves, toothless and soppy in retirement.  The twin towers of the Hydraulic Power Company are accumulating rust, and the sweat of stevedores is a distant memory even in the oldest nostrils.  Rotherhithe Street loops from St Mary’s to Surrey Quays, warped by an apartheid of the chequebooks.  The Yuppies, washing up at the Mayflower after weathering the storms of hostile real estate, lock their pricey river views behind the gates and wave from their Toyotas at the Great Unwashed across the road.  But the workers still possess the means of destruction.  When the bascule bridges are up, the only way out is the Tunnel.

SE17

Walworth Road was never quite as elegant as the Lubianka, but at least it wasn't Millbank.  We’re not allowed to say much more.  After dark, the men in suits are out there, watching.

SE18

Once upon a time Woolwich was really equitable.  Before the Gunners moved their goalposts the Arsenal was a city state, a model village with a mission.  No Postman Pat, no Rovers Return, just tough toys for tough boys, and the girls got their fingers burnt.  When the Empire's feet began to itch and General Gordon went scrambling for Africa, war was the only game in town and we were good at it.  Meanwhile, the Co-op launched its bid for local lebensraum, sweeping all before it till the engine of its ethos faltered and the market's sleeker models edged it permanently out of pole position.

© Paul Hamlyn 2003

Volume 2

Sorry!  We lied about volume 2!

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